Stephenson's Rocket and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway

Date

15 September 1830

Category

Science, technology & invention

Region

United Kingdom (Lancashire, north-west England)

Era

Modern

Significance

At the Rainhill Trials of 6-14 October 1829 the directors of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway held a public competition to decide what motive power their line should use.

Of the entrants, only 'Rocket', designed by Robert Stephenson, completed the trials, averaging about 12 mph and reaching some 30 mph; its multi-tube boiler, blast pipe and direct drive set the template for the modern steam locomotive. On 15 September 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened as the first inter-city line worked entirely by steam locomotives and built to carry passengers as well as freight on a regular timetable. The opening was marred by the death of the MP William Huskisson, struck by a locomotive in the first widely reported railway fatality. The line was an immediate commercial success, demonstrating that railways could be profitable passenger carriers between major cities. Its example unleashed the 'railway mania' of the 1830s and 1840s and made the steam railway central to industrial economies worldwide.

Empires active in 15 September 1830

• Russian Empire
  1721 CE – 1917 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Qing Dynasty
  1636 CE – 1912 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Mughal Empire
  1526 CE – 1857 CE

Related science, technology & invention events

• Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction
  29 August 1831
• Opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway
  27 September 1825
• Dalton publishes his atomic theory
  1808
• Third Plague Pandemic begins in Yunnan
  1855 (origin in Yunnan); global spread from 1894
• Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species
  24 November 1859
• Maxwell formulates the theory of electromagnetism
  1865–1873

Further reading

A Little History of Science

The wider story

A Little History of Science

William Bynum

Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.

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